Sony do make quite a range of Android tablets. I haven't used them, so I don't know if they're any good.

The Kindle Fire and Kobo Arc and Nexus 7 all start at ~$200. Sony's tablets start at around double that. As with their ereaders, Sony's can't really compete trying to sell hardware at a decent margin up front, when their competitors are selling at cost and hoping to make money selling content.

Edit -- p.s. looking right now, 'viewers' is 345 Amazon, 187 Kobo, 57 B&N, 50 Sony, yet the Sony forum has a total thread count of +12000 vs. +4000 with Kobo and +3000 with B&N, suggesting Sony used to be much more popular but has lost the momentum it had with early adopters.

I would guess that a year from now we'll be looking at a near Amazon monopoly in the US with B&N a distant second, and Amazon and Kobo as a duopoly in most other markets. Sony's wide retail footprint doesn't matter for much - as it once did - now that ereaders are widely available.

The Kindle Fire and Kobo Arc and Nexus 7 all start at ~$200. Sony's tablets start at around double that. As with their ereaders, Sony's can't really compete trying to sell hardware at a decent margin up front, when their competitors are selling at cost and hoping to make money selling content.

Edit -- p.s. looking right now, 'viewers' is 345 Amazon, 187 Kobo, 57 B&N, 50 Sony, yet the Sony forum has a total thread count of +12000 vs. +4000 with Kobo and +3000 with B&N, suggesting Sony used to be much more popular but has lost the momentum it had with early adopters.

I would guess that a year from now we'll be looking at a near Amazon monopoly in the US with B&N a distant second, and Amazon and Kobo as a duopoly in most other markets. Sony's wide retail footprint doesn't matter for much - as it once did - now that ereaders are widely available.

I am reminded of a song.

~Beat the drums slowly, play the pipes lowly, I am Sony and you know I've done wrong.~

I would guess that a year from now we'll be looking at a near Amazon monopoly in the US with B&N a distant second, and Amazon and Kobo as a duopoly in most other markets. Sony's wide retail footprint doesn't matter for much - as it once did - now that ereaders are widely available.

Amazon already have an effective monopoly in the UK market, because we lack the strong second place player which B&N occupy in the US. I don't know what Kobo sales are in the UK, but they've got to be tiny compared to Amazon.

Amazon already have an effective monopoly in the UK market, because we lack the strong second place player which B&N occupy in the US. I don't know what Kobo sales are in the UK, but they've got to be tiny compared to Amazon.

In the US they were at 6-8% at the time Rakuten bought them.
There are no signs it has gone up and a few it has gone down.
Any growth among non-Amazon ebook vendors in the US seems to be going to Apple. Apparently at the expense of the other ePub vendors more than Amazon.

Germany is still split between Bookeen, favored by one book store chain, Trekstor, favored by another, Kindle and Sony and Kobo. I was pleasantly surprised to have found them ALL in electronics stores alongside each other, even saw Pocketbooks there! Last year, all they had were Sonys.

In France, the major electronics store sells Kobos only. I think they have a content deal with Kobo.

Amazon already have an effective monopoly in the UK market, because we lack the strong second place player which B&N occupy in the US. I don't know what Kobo sales are in the UK, but they've got to be tiny compared to Amazon.

Maybe this is going to change with BN's entrance to the market. I also noticed that the Nook iOS app was recently updated to support the main European languages.... Very interesting.....

Device: BeBook,JetBook Lite,PRS-300-350-505-650,+ran out of space to type

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

Amazon already have an effective monopoly in the UK market, because we lack the strong second place player which B&N occupy in the US. I don't know what Kobo sales are in the UK, but they've got to be tiny compared to Amazon.

I'm not sure either Harry, they are nice machines but plagued with rushed firmware of the month updates, I'd always assumed they were in a reasonable second place here since W H Smiths moved their eBook sales to them. Also the only readers I've seen over here that you can try in a store where the staff actually know about them - might just be the Manchester store where they have clued in staff though

I've seen a fair number of Kobo's in the wild though so they might actually be more popular than we think here (The combination of Smith's and play.com should give them a fairly solid advertising base).